


All The Honest Games

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Film Noir, Prohibition Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're going to catch her, because you know her, because she's always been the fire to your water, and she's yours. </p>
<p>(Request from tumblr for both "Scourgecest Vacillation" and "An AU where Terezi is a detective and Vriska is a criminal." Done for Femmeslash February.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Honest Games

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to shamelessly self-promote that I'm doing art and ficlet requests for Femmeslash February [over at my tumblr.](http://cullionly.tumblr.com/) Other than that, I have to say, this was an absolute blast to write.

         He stumbles upon your secret room one rainy evening in ’32, looking for your downstairs pantry. Perhaps, then, it isn’t much of a secret room, perhaps the entries are neon signs to those who see with their eyes, because Karkat finds it easier than he finds your pantry, the dirty rascal. The sliding of the door is distinct enough that you hear it from upstairs and chuckle and trip over the stairs rushing down to grab your friend’s shoulders and snap, “out, out, out, out,” prodding him with your cane and cackling.

       “You’re obsessed, full fucking obsessed,” he says to you as you jab him out of the room. “You need a fucking professional, holy shit.”

       “I’d rather have my room,” you say, laughing because it’s completely true and you both know it.

 

       Vriska Serket is your hopeless obsession. You hate her- you hate her with every tuft of peachfuzz covering your body, you hate her with every drop of blood that pumps through to your brain, allowing you to exist to go on hating her. She’s your Al Capone, smug smiling criminal goldmine; she’s the gum on your shoe, the itch on your back, she’s the reason that you’ve dropped every case you’ve picked up in the past year because you can’t focus when a hundred blurry photographs of her wild hair and eyepatch are waiting for you to bring them to life.

You used to be friends, you and her. You used to be partners before you went straight and now you just can’t bust her because you just can’t catch her. She’s eternal cracking dynamite, fireworks caught in slow motion exploding behind your dead eyes, smelling of corkboard and blueberries and splattered spider guts.

But you’ve almost got her. She boasts about her irons in the fire, but you’re going to burn her and track her down by the scars on her fingertips. You don’t know what she’s up to next, but you do know that she’s in cahoots with Equius, and he trusts Vriska more than he trusts you, but you’re close with Nepeta and Nepeta is close with Equius and you’re going to exploit that until Vriska is yours and you’re laughing all the way to the big house.

 

Leijon’s house is an old quaint thing, painted pastel and trimmed in white. When she opens the door to let you in, three cats make a break for it into the overcast day. Nepeta doesn’t seem to mind, greeting you with a tackling hug that throws you off balance. Once you regain composure, you bat the dust off of your suit, glaring at her in a menacing way. She sees right through you, giggling in her girly way and curtseying before inviting you inside for little cubes and tea.

You play good cop/bad cop by yourself, because you used to play it with Vriska back in your crooked days, but you got sick of being the good cop all the time. You were born to be the bad cop, to spit in faces and slam on tables, to intimidate and glare with your empty black hole eyes, but all for justice, always for justice.

Nepeta requires a special strategy. She’s eager to please, easily fooled, but she’s a friend of yours and you’ll wake up in a cold sweat if you take advantage of her. You’ll have to ease the information from her, gently coax it out like a kitty in a kennel.

You make small talk until your tea goes cold and she fires up the kettle again. She asks about Karkat and Gamzee, and you tell her a plethora of information, a bit gossipy but all friendly, and you ask what Equius is doing these days. She goes silent. She always goes silent in a panic.

You don’t call her out on it. You idly sip at your tea, as if her silence is nothing but a buffer, and she eventually chips her face into a forced smile, like water eroding away at a scared stiff statue.

“He’s with bad people,” she eventually says, and you know immediately that Nepeta is going to spill the beans. Her voice is full of hurt, of rejection and a little spice of hope dashed in and, oh, you can tell that she wants him back and out of trouble.

“I can get him back for you, you know,” you say blunt as the knives she uses to slice through her butter and muffins. “He’s working with Vriska, isn’t he?”

She chews her lip and drops two sugar cubes into her tea, and the splashing of them into the hot ceramic clinks in a way that sounds just like ‘uh-huh’.

“The old factory on 55th street,” she whispers, and ushers you out.

 

 

       You often dream of that wild hair, of that curveless body and wicked smile, not in the night but in the day when you sit at your table chewing at your dinner, or when you sit at your desk thinking and thinking about where she went when your dual body split in two.

       “Are you sure you want to find her because she’s a criminal?” Karkat asks you, and you slam your fist into your palm because his face is too far away. But Karkat is unrelenting, he’s a snarling dog that comes back to snap and bite at your soul. You wish he was straighter, but he holds back around you because he knows it hammers it home when you have to figure it out yourself. “I know you watch film noir,” is all he says.

 

       When you get to the factory on 55th street, you’re too late. They must have wired Nepeta’s house, or worse, sent in some men to rough her up until she talked, but there’s cop cars all around the outside, parked as crooked as the men that drive them, so you climb the neighbouring building and make a mad leap onto the roof of the factory, climbing in through the maintenance shaft and down the grated stairs where you see her, or smell her- it’s really the same for you.

       She takes your breath away, in loathing and in majesty, standing there, surrounded by gunmen, looking defeated and scared. The face doesn’t suit her, it’s as if her skin is trying to push it away, but fires start inside of you- she’s yours and the bastards aren’t going to take her. You’re the one with the walls plastered with her photos, you’re the one who knows her and her wicked ways, and you’re the one that led the police to her.

       They yell at her for information, and she gives Equius up easily, spilling his location with a laugh, but when they try to get her to spill where her loot is, she sneers and spits at them. They don’t fire- she’s a bomb laced gold safe ready to burst with treasure.

       You crawl along the upper grates, as silently as possible but Vriska Serket is the best there is and she hears you as you stumble over a coiled crank chain. Her eye rolls up at you, and for a split second, your body crackles with electricity. You take a deep inhale, letting your brain muddle up all the smells into colours and pictures in your brain so you can see her inside your skull, lip twitched into a lopsided smile.

       She trusts you.

       You throw the chain down, and the second she grabs on, the cops start firing, so you pull crank the chain up like it’s your life on the line, because it is, it’s Vriska’s life, and she’s yours and your life and everything in it, and you don’t let her catch a single bullet.

 

       An eternity passes before you start running. Her face is right next to yours, and you feel her breath all over you, feel her wicked grin and the resonance inside your skull when she says, “Good move, Pyrope.” Her voice is teasing, but not hateful- you’re on the same side, you’re a team, you’re the Scourge Sisters of New York City, the nefarious duo plaguing the streets and taking what’s yours. The cops failed, the people failed, and the only pure thing left is you two. Pure night, you and her, pure vicious sin, and you don’t want it any other way.

       When you bust into your house, panting and exhausted, you grab her by the wild hair and kiss her so deeply that the sun explodes and the stars fall out of alignment, and when she kisses you back with all the valour of Vriska Serket, the galaxies explode into a million tonnes of hot burning stardust and fill you with pure tingling energy, red-hot fires of burning suns, until the only thing left in existence is you and her, the center of reality, the only pure thing, and she’s yours and you’re hers, and you do watch film noir, but those detectives don’t tango with Vriska Serket.


End file.
